September 9th, 2004
The Bush-Cheney campaign has emphasized to its business allies the importance of urging employees to take advantage of new rules that allow them to vote weeks before Election Day.
Trade associations and companies are heeding the call. Many, such as the Business-Industry Political Action Committee (BIPAC) and The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, are poised to launch a massive effort to get pro-business voters to cast their votes in the next several weeks and not wait until Nov. 2.
– The Hill, September 09, 2004 [ link ]
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Looks like Republicans want to lock-in some votes before supporters change their minds. Now, I don’t know about you, but I would have a serious problem with my employer “urging” me to vote under some timeline or in anyone direction.
September 9th, 2004
Looks like the Republican Noise Machine is already well at work!
The Matt Drudge Report is running a story that alleges that the memos questioning Bush’s National Guard service are forgeries. The Weekly Standard, a well known Republican tool of misinformation runs a similar story:
“[T]he apostrophes are curlicues of the sort produced by word processors on personal computers, not the straight vertical hashmarks typical of typewriters. Finally, in some references to Bush’s unit–the 111thFighter Interceptor Squadron–the “th” is a superscript in a smaller size than the other type. Again, this is typical (and often done automatically) in modern word processing programs. Although several experts allow that such a rendering might have been theoretically possible in the early 1970s, it would have been highly unlikely. Superscripts produced on typewriters–the numbers preceding footnotes in term papers, for example–were almost always in the same size as the regular type.” [ link to Weekly Standard story ]
As the author of the Republican Noise Machine notes in his book, and I paraphrase, it’s not important that Republicans get the facts right, it’s only important that they throw up enough mud to cloud the truth.
September 8th, 2004
Just heard an interesting interview (Real Player) with James Wolcott, author of Attack Poodles and Other Media Mutants : The Looting of the News in a Time of Terror.
Mainstream media (CNN, FOX, CBS, ABC, NBC, PBS, et al.) = Lap Dogs of the Right.
September 8th, 2004
From what I’ve read thus far, whenever Mr. Barnes has spoken on this subject, there’s been full-disclosure. I’m certain that 60 Minutes will mention that Mr. Barnes is a supporter of Mr. Kerry. This fact, I belive, should not negate Mr. Barnes remorse over getting the sons of the well connected out of Vietnam; while those less fortunate, over 55,000 of them, lost their lives in that war. At a public rally, for Mr. Kerry, Mr. Barnes said:
“It was the worst thing I did, was help a lot of wealthy supporters and a lot of people who had family names of importance get into the National Guard. And I’m very sorry of that and I’m very ashamed, and I apologize to you as the voters of Texas.”
To read the quote and for more background on how Mr. Barnes’ story came to the foreground, see this article.
I’d like to belive that as Mr. Barnes comes into the twilight of his life, he’s taking stock of his deeds and is making peace with his conscious; because, as Mr. Barnes alludes, for every young man he kept out of Vietnam, another one went in his place, and many of them did not return.
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P.S. For those of you that have followed my posts, you know that I keep a close watch on our military fatality count in Iraq — which, to me, is the Vietnam of my generation. Sadly, the fatality count now stands at 1,004 — some 4 weeks ago, the figure was 932.
By the way, there are some currently serving military personnel that also question the Iraq war, they can be found at Operation Truth. (Perhaps, someday, they too will be attacked and vilified, as Mr. Kerry has, for questioning the Vietnam of our generation.)
September 7th, 2004
Looks like Mr. Bush’s truncated enlistment in the Texas Air National Guard is going to be revisited.
Tomorrow, September 8th, CBS will air an interview with former Texas Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes; wherein he discloses that the Bush family, through associates, approached him to pull some strings to get the young George W. Bush into the Texas Air National Guard — thus avoiding Vietnam. (See the 60 Minutes page here.)
And, of course, there’s the A.P.’s freedom of information suit which reveals that at least 5 key documents are missing from Mr. Bush’s National Guard record. The missing documents are:
- Records of a required investigation into why [Mr.] Bush lost flight status. When Bush skipped his 1972 physical, regulations required his Texas commanders to “direct an investigation as to why the individual failed to accomplish the medical examination,” according to the Air Force manual at the time.
- A written acknowledgment from [Mr.] Bush that he had received the orders grounding him, [after losing his flight status].
- Reports of formal counseling sessions [Mr.] Bush was required to have after missing more than three training sessions. Bush missed at least five months’ worth of National Guard training in 1972.
- A signed statement from [Mr.] Bush acknowledging he could be called to active duty if he did not promptly transfer to another guard unit after leaving Texas. The statement was required as part of a Vietnam-era crackdown on no-show guardsmen.
- A report from the Texas Air National Guard to Bush’s local draft board certifying that Bush remained in good standing.
Read the A.P. article here.
Meantime, we have an organization with demonstrable ties to the Bush campaign smearing Mr. Kerry’s heroic war record; and, still, Mr. Bush’s supporters (many of whom claim to be pro-military) stand by their man, like a battered wife.
To quote conservatives of yesteryear, America, where is the moral outrage? A genuine war hero is smeared, simply to advance Mr. Bush’s agenda, and I don’t hear a peep from so-called military supporters.
